topic Re: Weird thing happend when trying to rename SAS catalog in SAS Programming

Weird thing happend when trying to rename SAS catalog

whymath — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 03:19:41 GMT

I'm trying to rename a SAS catalog, this catalog is used to store macros and I have used "SASMSTORE=" option to change that. Well, there is an error message: This catalog is in use in DMS process.

So I start to write some test until really weird thing happend. I write "%i_am_not_exist()" before PROC DATASETS, the log report an error that this macro not resloved, but the renaming program successes!

One more troubling detail: File size of this catalog changes from 5 kb to 21 kb(I see this from SAS File Explorer), why?

How do you think of that?

Re: Weird thing happend when trying to rename SAS catalog

whymath — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 03:33:03 GMT

The test code:

libname cus "C:\Profiles\Work";
options mstored sasmstore=cus;
%macro a()/store;
  %put I am placeholder;
%mend;

option sasmstore=sasuser;
%i_am_not_exist();

proc datasets nolist lib=cus memtype=catalog;
  change Sasmacr=forms ;
quit;

Re: Weird thing happend when trying to rename SAS catalog

Tom — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 03:48:17 GMT

Is the catalog used as the location that SAS will look for compiled macros?
If you probably need to first disable that, probably by pointing somewhere else.

But why do you have compiled macros at all? Using them just causes trouble, as you have discovered.

Re: Weird thing happend when trying to rename SAS catalog

Patrick — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 04:52:09 GMT

That SAS continues processing even after throwing an error due to a non existing macro is just how SAS works.

Add options errorabend if you want SAS to always stop processing (well... terminate the SAS session actually) if it encounters an error.

options errorabend;

libname cus "C:\temp\Work";
options mstored sasmstore=cus;
%macro a()/store;
  %put I am placeholder;
%mend;

option sasmstore=sasuser;
%i_am_not_exist();

proc datasets nolist lib=cus memtype=catalog;
  change Sasmacr=forms ;
  run;
quit;

/* clean-up to allow for re-run */
proc datasets lib=cus kill;
run;quit;

When running your code without option errorabend then that's what I'm getting

Using SAS EG I can't replicate the error you're showing:

I also can't replicate this file size growth from 5 to 21KB. In my environment the catalog is and remains 21KB from start.

And same question as Tom: Why would you want to pre-compile your macros at all? Why not just store them in a folder that's part of your SAS Autocall facility.

Just store the macro definition for macro a under C:\temp\Work\a.sas

You then can add the folder at the beginning of the macro search path using syntax as below:

options insert=(sasautos="C:\temp\Work");
%a();